Time to Loot Journal: November 2020 (Five Game Challenge Day 30)

The stitches came out of my thumb earlier this evening. Just down to a more moderate looking wrap on it now too, so things are on the up and up I reckon- looking less like a mummy each day. Then tomorrow — fingers crossed; as this is by no means confirmed — my wife should get the cast off her leg. Although at least in her case, even if that’s true, we know there will be a fair period of readjustment and working up weight-bearing again.

In any case, as to me and this thing?

Despite nominally coming off the rails when I sliced my thumb — certainly it put a damper on posting every day, at least — the release of Shadowlands made things a heck of a lot easier to stay on track with the selected five titles than it was earlier in the month.

I’m not even feeling a pining to go back to Valhalla or Godfall just yet. I’m sure I will — for Valhalla, at least — but right now I’m once again fully immersed in the world of WoW.

I hit the goal I set myself of 60 by the end of the weekend and then some. I managed to get geared for heroics and have run a bunch of those with guildies and friends — sitting at about ilvl 166 at the moment — and am now chomping at the bit to step up again into Mythic 0’s.

Might give that a few days still though as those still needing to catch-up do so. My brother is right on the cusp of being able to use LFG for heroics for example and a pair of friends got married over the weekend and so only hit 60 tonight.

I couldn’t perhaps tell you exactly why just yet, but I haven’t been this engrossed by WoW since Wrath of the Lich King, I think. Getting back into the Auction House and voluntarily considering taking alts to max level isn’t something I’m generally keen on. Perhaps a large part of this is that the campaign didn’t overstay its welcome. The leveling process was quick and didn’t feel it was designed to just pad our time out.

Heck, I’ve even maxed out Shadowlands Tailoring, Enchanting and Cooking. I was a bit slow off the mark with these, so lost some of the crazy early money-making opportunities and until I start regularly getting ‘junk’ epics, the Eternal Crystals required for the big enchants can only come from the AH where they’re being priced well above the actual enchants they’re components of at the moment.

I’m sure this will all settle down again over the coming weeks and months though and I’m curious what crafting profs I might take next. Possible that this will simply be a function of what character I do next. e.g., if I level my Druid (ex-Main) then Leatherworking and Skinning is a given. Priest? Herbalism and Alchemy. But who knows.. I might yet go completely off the rails with a Hunter or somesuch.

Gaming Goals

November’s Goals

• Five Game Challenge: Post every day
• Five Game Challenge: Play only games in the pre-selected list
• WoW: Reach level 60 before the end of Sunday 29th November.

Well, I didn’t get the post every day one down unfortunately. But going to give myself an injury-pass on that one. In terms of the other Five Game Challenge of playing only games on the list? Also going to give myself a pass there — although in the interests of transparency, I did earlier in the month open Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and run through the config and even a benchmark test. But I never hit that ever-so-tantalising ‘New game’ button.

December’s Goals

Going to set myself two goals just for WoW I think.

• WoW: Craft my first legendary!
  No ilvl requirement for it, could be a 190. I need to look more into the pros and cons here, especially given it IS possible to upgrade a legendary later on. But I still might wait for the 230 (I think it is?) variant. Plus… This also relies on actually getting the legendary memories I want, which in turn — as a frost mage — means hoping the right Torghast wings open up. So we’ll see!
  
• WoW: Complete every dungeon on Mythic 0 (or higher)
  Should be easy enough, I reckon!

Considered bringing some of the goals I abandoned back in October, and I still might in a somewhat unofficial capacity. :)

Games Played in November

I feel like some time is missing here, but I checked and I haven’t had any further issues this month with reformatting or otherwise causing ManicTime to lose data this month.

It’s also possible that I’m considering the time it took to actually mod Skyrim and RimWorld in my mental model of the month, too.

Whatever the reason — that was 66.6 hours of gaming this month, with most of it frankly being in the latter half of the month when Shadowlands launched.

Which is a fact that still amuses me given my thinking earlier in the month.

Interesting to see the drop in gaming hours this November though. I think had I not become quite engrossed by WoW the hours this month would’ve been way less. Perhaps not even cracking 30 overall.

The Blog

Welp, as already noted — I didn’t hit the goal of posting every day. But it still brought a substantial increase in my posting this month compared to normal with the publish button being hit 21 times (including this one), compared to just 8 last month. I think I would’ve kept up all the way to the 30-mark if not for cutting my thumb. But hard to be sure. I was certainly starting to feel the pinch, even though the beginning of the month it felt no big deal relative to just not jumping right into off-list games. Hehe.

Most Viewed Posts

1. Deep Rock Galactic: The Solo Experience
2. Damnit… RMA Required on my RTX 3080
3. Transport Fever: Things I Wish I Knew When I Started
4. Humble Choice: September 2020
5. Humble Choice: November 2020 (Five Game Challenge – Day 7)

The main weird one to me is why the September Humble Choice post made a resurgence. I took a look at the games it contained and couldn’t spot anything obvious that I was aware of to explain it.

Weird.

In any case! Good to be able to post again. Thumb is still going to bother me a little while yet, I think. But certainly entirely manageable now. :)